1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to portable computing systems and, more particularly, to operating modes and power management of portable computing systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Since the introduction of personal computing machines, portability of the computing environment has been in demand. As the computing power and speed of the processors that drive the computing platforms has increased so has the demand for this portability. However, there are some drawbacks to portable computing platforms. For example, some portable machines have less performance than their desktop counterparts. In addition, battery life can be relatively short, thereby limiting productivity in some cases. Although many newer laptops include some form of power management that addresses some of the power concerns, in many cases, this equates to simply turning off or placing the computer in a sleep mode when the computer has not been in use for some amount of time, for example. As more and more functionality is added to portable computing platforms, it may be desirable to improve the power management and overall performance of portable computer systems.